Sunday

Sep 17, 2017 at 6:00 AM

Jasiel Correia II and Linda Pereira, and every City Council candidate, has to run at least partly on a plan to deal with the increasing amount of gun incidents in the city.

The recent rash of “shots fired” calls in Fall River has yet to produce a death. But if things continue at this pace, a killing is inevitable, if only by accident. More than 20 shots were fired on Weetamoe Street not too long ago, and it’s nothing but luck than some of those bullets didn’t pass through a tenement house window and kill a man, a woman, a child, or a baby in its crib.

Firing guns they’ve sometimes never fired before, firing guns they probably don’t know how to clean, Fall River’s legion of gang-bangers and drug dealers may be missing each other, but every shot they fire rips a hole in the city’s heart and damages Fall River’s already shaky reputation as a livable city.

There were 14 shots fired incidents between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year. There were six during the same time period last year.

Make no mistake about it, the city is still livable. Neighborhoods vary, as they do in all cities, and Fall River still has plenty of “nice” working class neighborhoods.

Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia II has justified his “branding” program by saying that, if Fall River doesn’t tell its story, other people will.

Mayoral candidate Linda Pereira has nearly as famously asked what happened to the Fall River in which she was raised.

The recent shots fired incidents speak to both Correia’s question and Pereira’s nostalgia.

Gunfire definitely tells a story, a story that discourages development, frightens employers away, encourages people to leave the city and destabilizes neighborhoods. If someone gets killed, the story will be even worse.

And gunfire isn’t a part of the Fall River Pereira remembers so fondly.

What to do?

Police, outnumbered by the very nature of their job, are doing what they can, often investigating shots fired calls that come with no corpse and no witnesses, arriving after the gunman has fled.

Neighbors need to be more vigilant, and they need to call police. The slogan “stop snitchin’” just encourages poor and working class people to surrender their neighborhoods to cheap criminals.

Correia and Pereira, as well as every City Council candidate, has to run at least partly on a plan to deal with the increasing amount of gun incidents in the city.

By “plan,” we don’t mean saying that you support the police, or you’re going to make the city “safe again.” Slogans don’t stop bullets. The voters deserve numbers.

Certainly, during the last debate, Correia was able to point to some good numbers, including new police cars. But his administration still has police union contracts to settle. That needs to be done as soon as possible.

Fall River’s on a bit of a run right now. There are new jobs, some new stores and apartment buildings. The waterfront is coming along.